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I think you must mean this article accessible from the website of our companion party in Canada:https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/imagine.200505.may.pdfHere's another article from us on the same subject:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1217-january-2006/intellectual-property-further-restriction-persona

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The both of them had the same protectionist policy as a way of supposedly reviving employment in the rust belt. Trump won because he got the vote for this as well as those of traditional Republicans (and also because of the undemocratic US presidential election system). We'll see how protectionist Trump will be be and if he really will provoke trade wars with China and Japan.

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This is the best anti-anarchist (and anti-insurrectionists in general) song of all time (just as Rovics's is the best against the vanguardists — we play his all the time at our Head Office in Claphm High St)::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXnoLAEUSQThey fight  the state and the state wins …

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We now know the date and candidates. It's Thursday 1 December and there are 8 candidates, which is low for a by-election. There's the outgoing MP (Goldsmith), the Liberals, Labour. Since the Greens and UKIP are not contesting (calling for a vote, respectively for the LibDems and Goldsmith) the popular saying of yesteryear lives again :

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Labour, Liberal, TorySame old fucking story

Only Goldsmith is not standing as a Tory but as a Nimby. The other candidates are: the nasty Christian Peoples Alliance (which wants to ban abortion, gay marriage, and sex that's not for procreation), the Monster Raving Loony Party, two independents and a rich eccentric with more money than sense.The LibDems fancy they can win and are pouring resources and people into the campaign. I've already had two of their canvassers knock on my door and had six leaflets from them. They are trying to turn it into a referendum against "hard Brexit". Goldsmith, like his dad nororious asset-stripper Sir James Goldsmith who founded and financed the Referendum Party in the 1997 general election (and who Private Eye dubbed "golden balls" because he was always suing them), is a Brexiteer.We shan't be contesting but we will be doing something, eg holding a lterature stall, to be decided at West London branch meeting on Tuesday.

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I have to confess that I started reading your post but then gave it up as a waste of time.

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Just ordered his book on the Open Economy. Previously ordered Peter Joseph's new book  The New Human Rights Movement due out next March. We'll review both in the Socialist Standard.

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Actually, I remember contacting him in 2011 or 2012 when  his Free World Charter video first came out. He's from Ireland as is rather obvious from "the strong regional accent" of the commentary.

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Sounds like a good idea. You've had a good run for your money (sorry, time) here, Here's their website:http://www.wspus.org/There is also this:https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WSM_Forum/info

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His summary of so-called "post-Marxism" (which boils down to forget the big picture only local struggles count) is quite good. It's the practice and implicit view of most activist groups even if they don't call themselves "post-Marxists):

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(1) Socialism was a failure and all "general theories" of societies are condemned torepeat this process. Ideologies are false (except post-Marxism!) because they reflect aworld of thought dominated by a single gender/raceculture system.(2) The Marxist emphasis on social class is "reductionist" because classes aredissolving; the principle political points of departure are cultural and rooted in diversidentities (race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference) .(3) The state is the enemy of democracy and freedomand a corrupt and inefficientdeliverer of social welfare. In its place, "civil society" is the protagonist of democracy andsocial improvement.(4) Central planning leads to and is a product of bureaucracy which hinders theexchange of goods between producers. Markets and market exchanges, perhaps withlimited regulations, allow for greater consumptionand more efficient distribution.(5) The traditional left's struggle for state poweris corrupting and leads toauthoritarian regimes which then subordinate civilsociety to its control. Local strugglesover local issues by local organizations are the only democratic means of change, alongwith petition/pressure on national andinternational authorities.(6) Revolutions always end badly or are impossible:social transformations threatento provoke authoritarian reactions. The alternativeis to struggle for and consolidatedemocratic transitions to safeguard electoral processes.(7) Class solidarity is part of past ideologies, reflecting earlier politics and realities.Classes no longer exist. There are fragmented "locales" where specific groups (identities)and localities engage in self-help and reciprocal relation for "survival" based oncooperation with external supporters. Solidarity isa cross-class phenomena, a humanitariangesture.( Class struggle and confrontation does not produce tangible results; it provokesdefeats and fails, to solve immediate problems. Government and international cooperationaround specific projects does result in increases in production and development.(9) Anti-imperialism is another expression of the past that has outlived its time. Intoday's globalized economy, there is no possibilityof confronting the economic centers.The world is increasingly interdependent and in this world there is a need for greaterinternational cooperation in transferring capital,technology and know-how from the "rich"to the "poor" countries.(10) Leaders of popular organizations should not beexclusively oriented towardorganizing the poor and sharing their conditions. Internal mobilization should be based onexternal funding. Professionals should design programs and secure external financing toorganize local groups. Without outside aid, local groups and professional careers wouldcollapse.

His refutation, while making some valid points, is not so good. He seems to be coming from a Leninist position, certainly from someone who thinks there was something socialist about Russia and such countries.

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Anybody can laugh at and raise a chuckle at Trump's expense but Brand (speaking as an individual like you and me not as a comedian) was trying to do more than this. In fact he was trying to be funny at all but to offer an explanation why people who wanted a change from the existing status quo were so desperate as to try even an option like Trump, despite them knowing how offensive and absurd he is, and that this says something too about conventional politics and politicians.I'm not sure how valid this analysis is but at least it's a serious contribution to the debate.

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Here's Russel Brand on Trump's election:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q&feature=push-u&attr_tag=X_DnzuPjAQw-6Perhaps surprisingly, not all that bad.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

The Socialist Party has made a spirited defence in not making reform demands, which if i guessed my dates correct was followed by De Leon's SLP who also dropped the minimum programme.

Actually it was the other way round. The SLP of America dropped all reform demands in 1900. So we followed them, probably consciously, when we were founded in 1904. Oddly, the SLP of GB, when it was set up in 1903, did have a reform programme.

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Aren't they the nearest equivalent in the US to the Labour Party here?http://www.dsausa.org/about_dsa

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As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.

So a 1000 extra active reformists. Compare with our position that

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As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, we campaign directly for socialism and so help the emergence of the majority socialist understanding without which capitalism cannot be ended and socialism established.

And don't they normally support the Democratic Party?

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Apparently they confirm it themselves, though it could be a tactical manoeuvre. But let's hope they get back in and dissolve their fake "Socialist Party". I've been waiting for this to bring their attempt bo steal our name to an end.http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/txt/451.pdf

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Phil Sharpe’s ‘market socialism’ is obvious nonsense (Letters, October 27). He uses an impoverished Russia and adoption of the New Economic Policy as proof. But the Soviet Republic’s strategic retreat back to the market has as much relevance for us today as does the Bolsheviks’ forcible requisitions of surplus grain from peasants under war communism or the suppression of free speech and banning of opposing parties.However, that does not mean that his Socialist Party of Great Britain critics are right (Letters, November 3). Together all of them unscientifically conflate socialism and full communism. As if, once the working class comes to power, we can instantly do away with every feature, every limitation inherited from capitalism. In fact, the struggle for the communist mode of production begins after the political victory of the proletariat and the establishment of a regime committed to socialism.Our starting point is therefore wage-labour, money and the market … under the rule of the working class. However, we seek to establish the communist principle of need.Contra the SPGB, the generally accepted Marxist term for this replacement of capitalism by communism, this period of transition from one mode of production to another, is ‘socialism’. Eg, in his Critique of the Gotha programme (1875), Marx distinguishes between a first, lower, phase of communist society and a higher phase (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 24, London 1989, pp81-90).In the lower phase of communism the ruling principle is: “To each according to their contribution”. Individuals receive back from society – after necessary deductions – exactly what they have given in terms of labour contributed. There is, therefore, inequality because there is unequal labour time. Only in the higher phase does the principle, “From each according to their ability, to each according to his needs”, apply.When Lenin came to write his State and revolution (1917), it was “usual” to call the first phase of communism ‘socialism’ (VI Lenin CW Vol 25, Moscow 1977, p472). It was an orthodox Second International formulation. In other words, it was not the “opportunism” of Lenin and the Bolsheviks which introduced the distinction between socialism (communism – lower phase) and communism (communism – higher phase).As Marx recognised, life demands such a distinction. One can give the two phases of communism whatever name one likes – first and second, lower and higher, socialism and communism. What matters is the distinction.Jack Conrad

In this reply to us, Jack Conrad (of the Weekly Worke itselfr) confuses two "transitions". The one from capitalism to the first phase of communism/socialism and the one from the first to the higher phase of communism/socialism.  Marx, Engels, Kautsky and the others did envisage money, wages, coops, even capitalists, existing in the first transition but these would have disappeared by the time even the first phase of communism was established.But, given the quite different situation in terms of productive capacity and organisation today to the 1870s, it's pretty pointless basing what to do now on what Marx and Engels's assessment of the position then (150 years ago — it's as if they had based theirs on what things were like in 1720). Once a majority want socialism/communism the first transition can be got through very quickly (capitalism is only maintained by the laws of the state; as soon as these are abrogated so is capitalism and the first phase over).He is wrong, too, about the distinction between "socialism" and "communism". It wasn't "an orthodox Second International formulation" and he'd be hard put to demonstrate that it was. Not even Lenin himself made it before 1917.I suppose I'll have to send another letter making these points….

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